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Welcome to Close Call Sports. CCS objectively tracks and analyzes close and controversial calls in sport, with great regard for the rules and spirit of the game. Developed from The Left Field Corner: MLB Umpire Ejection Fantasy League (UEFL), whose purpose is to objectively track and analyze umpire ejections, video instant replay reviews and their corresponding calls, with great regard for the rules and spirit of the game.

Tuesday, April 26, 2016

Unconfirmed - MLB to Promote Ump, A Look at Call-Ups

Unconfirmed: MLB will name a new full-time umpire to its staff in May 2016. This umpire would replace the departed Paul Schrieber, whose contract is set to expire at the end of April. Per our umpire sabermetrics and given past hiring behavior, we predict MLB will hire John Tumpane (37%), Adam Hamari (35%), or Clint Fagan (22%).

When putting together the umpire crew list for the 2016 season, MLB took care to leave two slots open to so-called full-time call-ups: AAA umpires by status who were assigned to a crew and would spend most of their time in 2016 not in Triple-A, but in the big leagues. As noted in the pre-season, one of these [Call-Up Umpire] slots accounted for Tim Welke's retirement, which will effectively occur only at the end of the 2016 season, while the other is for Paul Schrieber, who did not return to baseball in 2016.

Schreiber's contract reportedly expires April 30, 2016, effectively creating a vacancy on the MLB full-time staff. As we saw in 2015, when MLB hired Tripp Gibson, Mark Ripperger, and Will Little to the full-time staff, the Commissioner's Office selected three umpires with extensive experience during the 2014 season, including the coveted full-time [Call-Up Umpire] position. Gibson worked an MLB-leading 149 games in 2014, with Ripperger (142 games) and Little (141 gms) closely behind.

The 2014 MLB umpire crews had also featured several AAA rover positions to account for retiring and Disabled List umpires whose contracts ran into and through that season. For instance, Quinn Wolcott was named as a full-time MLB umpire in early July 2014, only when DL-bound umpire Gary Darling's retirement took effect and a contract-MLBU position opened up.